Sun plans N1 developer kit, defends Java process

Sun Microsystems plans to release a developer toolkit tailored to Sun's N1 architecture for IT infrastructure management.

Company officials on Friday afternoon also defended the process for publicly submitting improvements to the Java programming language.

During a Software Developer Chalk Session at Sun offices inMenlo Park, Calif., Sun officials touted the Java Community Process and plans for an N1 toolkit. They also discussed improvements to informational Web sites for Sun developers.

The N1 toolkit is intended for use with Sun's N1 architecture, which is Sun's virtualizing and provisioning technology intended to provide for unified management of data center resources. "We're working on an N1 software developer kit, which would greatly extend an IT developer's ability to interact with components of the system," said John Fowler, Sun's CTO for software.

The kit would, for example, enable a customized control system to be implemented within N1, Fowler said.

Sun wants to encourage developer participation in N1, according to Fowler. "In general, it's to our best interest and our historical interest has always been to encourage developers as much as possible," he said. No date has been set yet for release of the kit.

Sun officials defended the Java Community Process (JCP), through which proposed improvements to Java are submitted for consideration by JCP participants. IBM's Bob Sutor, director of WebSphere infrastructure software at the company, has charged that Sun controls the JCP.  IBM is a member of the JCP.

"What we would hope is eventually we would get to a point where there's no single company that has main control over it," Sutor said during the IBM developerWorksLive conference inNew Orleanslast month, referring to Sun as company in control.

But Fowler on Friday said Sun's control is limited to the trademark of the word, Java. "The reason we control the word [is] we want to be sure when we use the trademark, Java, it's compatible."

Fowler also said Sun could not offer Java under an open-source format because this could result in a fracturing of the language, with multiple versions arising. "It would be very difficult to maintain compatability," Fowler said. Sun does not want to see 20 incompatible flavors of Java, as has happened with the Unix operating system, he said.